A working vocabulary for utility coordination on commercial development. These are the terms that come up in the room with electric, gas, water, sewer, and telecom — defined the way the discipline actually uses them. For the pillar primer, see [Utility Coordination 101](/insights/utility-coordination-101).
The required marking of existing underground utilities before excavation, typically obtained via a state-level one-call system (e.g. 811). Public locates mark utility-owned assets; they do not mark private lines, abandoned facilities, or assets the utility has lost record of.
Most subsurface surprises on commercial projects involve assets that a public locate did not show. A private utility survey is the only mitigation.
A geophysical survey (typically GPR plus electromagnetic methods) performed by a private firm to locate underground utilities not covered by a public locate. The survey fee is trivial relative to the cost of a mid-trench surprise and is the single largest risk-reduction move in pre-construction.
A formal commitment from a utility that it can and will provide service to a specific address at a specific capacity. Required by many jurisdictions before a building permit issues, especially for water and sewer. Lead times to obtain a will-serve letter range from days to months depending on the utility and the load size.
A legal right for one party to use a portion of another party's property — most commonly granted to utilities to run distribution lines, service drops, or access for maintenance. Easement geometry affects where buildings, parking, and landscaping can go, and modifying an existing easement is a months-long legal process.
Public land — typically the street and sidewalk — under the control of the municipality. Work in the ROW requires a separate permit (street-opening, sidewalk-shed, encroachment) and often involves coordination with utilities that own assets in the ROW.
An excavation in which two or more utilities install their facilities simultaneously, sharing the trench, the restoration cost, and (usually) the project schedule. Joint trench is the most efficient way to install multiple utilities; it requires every participating utility to agree on sequence, separation, and timing.
When one utility declines, the joint trench fragments into sequential trenches and the schedule expands by months.
The physical connection between a utility's distribution line and the customer's building — for electric, the run from the transformer to the meter; for gas, the run from the main to the regulator. Service-drop installation is scheduled by the utility's construction crew and is often the longest single-window task in pre-energization.
The moment a utility actually turns on service to a building. For electric, energization can run 12 to 36 weeks from approved application in tier-1 metros. The construction schedule must be backsolved against the energization date — every week of slip in energization is a week of slip in CO.
The planned switch of service from an existing utility connection to a new one, typically requiring a brief outage. Cutover windows are coordinated with the utility, the tenant, and the contractor, and are scheduled weeks to months in advance.
A document submitted to the electric utility describing the building's design electrical load — total demand, voltage, phase, and any special equipment. The utility uses the load letter to size the service and to determine whether existing distribution capacity is adequate or whether an upgrade is required.
The concrete pad on which a pad-mounted electric transformer is installed. The pad is owned by the customer; the transformer is owned by the utility. Transformer-pad placement requires utility approval and must accommodate utility access clearances, which often constrains site planning.
A permit allowing a private party to place or maintain a structure in the public ROW — most commonly for sidewalk vaults, awnings, area drains, or temporary construction elements. Encroachment permits are issued by the municipality, often with utility sign-offs as a prerequisite.
A one-time fee charged by a utility (most commonly water and sewer) to connect a new service to its system. Tap fees can range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars depending on the utility, the building's projected demand, and any system-development components.
An unintended energization of a de-energized line, typically from an on-site generator or solar array. Backfeed is a safety hazard for utility crews and is the primary reason utilities require external disconnects and lockable means before energizing service to a building with on-site generation.
The discipline of coordinating fiber, copper, and wireless backhaul installation with the building schedule. Telecom is the most fragmented utility category — every major carrier has its own application, its own crew schedule, and its own restoration standard — and is the most common source of last-minute coordination failure.
The part of PermitPilot™, Commun-ET's proprietary operated service layer, that our team uses to run utility-coordination workflows across multi-site programs: locate-ticket tracking, joint-trench conflict detection, outage-window scheduling, per-territory contact matrix maintenance, and energization-date forecasting. AI does the pattern recognition. Our people do the judgment. See Inside the Agent Control Center for context.
A named principal can scope your program in one call. Most operators leave with a clearer read on their own queue than they came in with.
